An Amazon driver loads packages into a delivery van at an Amazon delivery station on November 28, 2022 in Alpharetta, Georgia.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Amazon has for years been marching toward making same-day and next-day delivery the standard for members of its Prime loyalty club.
On Monday, the company said it reached a major milestone in those efforts. Amazon said so far this year it’s delivered 1.8 billion units to U.S. Prime members the same or next day, roughly four times what it delivered at those speeds by this point in 2019.
For the past four years, Amazon has poured money and resources into revamping its warehouse and delivery network to shorten shipping times from two days to one day or less. Those efforts hit a snag during the Covid pandemic due to supply chain and labor-market challenges, but normal delivery speeds have largely returned as a result of new warehouses coming online and other improvements to the company’s operations.
Amazon says it achieved its “fastest Prime speeds ever” last quarter.
One of the company’s biggest changes in the past year is a shift away from a national “hub and spoke” fulfillment network, where packages might travel through several facilities across the country, said Udit Madan, Amazon’s vice president of transportation, in an interview. The company moved to a model in which the country is divided into eight smaller regions, with local facilities that stock commonly ordered items.
Fast delivery is notoriously expensive and logistically challenging, and companies typically lose money on deliveries. But Amazon’s change cut costs and boosted delivery speeds, Madan said.
“Our fastest speeds tend to be our most economical,” he said.
Driving fewer miles and requiring fewer handoffs has reduced Amazon’s “cost to serve,” Madan added. Amazon says it’s cut the distance items are traveling from warehouses to customers by 15%, and lowered the number of “touchpoints,” or how many times a package is handled, by 12%.
The company has also seen improvements in its machine-learning technology that allows it to better plan where and how much inventory is placed in warehouses, hastening delivery times. Across the top 60 U.S. metro areas, Amazon says more than half of Prime orders arrived the same or next day.
Speedier delivery has pushed shoppers to purchase more items from Amazon than they might normally buy from their local corner store, or big-box retailers like Best Buy.
“We’ve consistently seen that as we’re offering faster speeds, we’re actually expanding the consideration set that customers think of us for when they’re thinking about their purchases,” Madan said. “What we’re seeing is greater engagement and more purchases from customers.”
Amazon is rolling out more so-called “same-day sites,” or smaller buildings located closer to large metro areas where the company fulfills, sorts and delivers products from a single location. It has traditionally operated distinct facilities for these purposes, meaning separate fulfillment centers, sort centers and delivery stations.
Same-day sites are stocked with a rotating selection of millions of items tailored to what customers are purchasing in the area, whereas a typical warehouse is much larger and may have a more random assortment of products.
Amazon plans to double the number of same-day sites in its network over the next two years, Madan said.
The company declined to share how many same-day sites it maintains. The Wall Street Journal reported Amazon has opened approximately 45 facilities since 2019, citing data from MWPVL International, a supply chain and logistics consulting firm that closely tracks Amazon’s distribution network.
Anne Wojcicki attends the WSJ Magazine Style & Tech Dinner in Atherton, California, on March 15, 2023.
Kelly Sullivan | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki and New Mountain Capital have submitted a proposal to take the embattled genetic testing company private, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Wojcicki and New Mountain have offered to acquire all of 23andMe’s outstanding shares in cash for $2.53 per share, or an equity value of approximately $74.7 million. The company’s stock closed at $2.42 on Friday with a market cap of about $65 million.
The offer comes after a turbulent year for 23andMe, with the stock losing more than 80% of its value in 2024. In January, the company announced plans to explore strategic alternatives, which could include a sale of the company or its assets, a restructuring or a business combination.
Read more CNBC tech news
23andMe has a special committee of independent directors in place to evaluate potential paths forward. The company appointed three new independent directors to its board in October after all seven of its previous directors abruptly resigned the prior month. The special committee has to approve Wojcicki and New Mountain’s proposal.
“We believe that our Proposal provides compelling value and immediate liquidity to the Company’s public stockholders,” Wojcicki and Matthew Holt, managing director and president of private equity at New Mountain, wrote in a letter to the special committee on Thursday.
Wojcicki previously submitted a proposal to take the company private for 40 cents per share in July, but it was rejected by the special committee, in part because the members said it lacked committed financing and did not provide a premium to the closing price at the time.
Wojcicki and New Mountain are willing to provide secured debt financing to fund 23andMe’s operations through the transaction’s closing, the filing said. New Mountain is based in New York and has $55 billion of assets under management, according to its website.
Shares of Hims & Hers Health tumbled more than 23% on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the shortage of semaglutide injection products has been resolved.
Semaglutide is the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. Those medications are part of a class of drugs called GLP-1s, and demand for the treatments has exploded in recent years. As a result, digital health companies such as Hims & Hers have been prescribing compounded semaglutide as an alternative for patients who are navigating volatile supply hurdles and insurance obstacles.
Compounded drugs are custom-made alternatives to brand-name drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs, and compounders are allowed to produce them when brand-name treatments are in shortage. The FDA doesn’t review the safety and efficacy of compounded products.
Hims & Hers began offering compounded semaglutide to patients in May, and it owns compounding pharmacies that produce the medications.
Compounded medications are typically much cheaper than their branded counterparts. Hims & Hers sells compounded semaglutide for less than $200 per month, while Ozempic and Wegovy both cost around $1,000 per month without insurance.
Read more CNBC tech news
The FDA said Friday that it will start taking action against compounders for violations in the next 60 to 90 days, depending on the type of facility, in order to “avoid unnecessary disruption to patient treatment.”
“Now that the FDA has determined the drug shortage for semaglutide has been resolved, we will continue to offer access to personalized treatments as allowed by law to meet patient needs,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum posted Friday on X. “We’re also closely monitoring potential future shortages, as Novo Nordisk stated two weeks ago that it would continue to have ‘capacity limitations’ and ‘expected continued periodic supply constraints and related drug shortage notifications.'”
Him & Hers’ weight loss offerings have been a massive hit with investors. Shares of the company climbed more than 200% last year, and the stock is already up more than 100% this year despite Friday’s move.
Even before it added compounded GLP-1s to its portfolio, the company said in its 2023 fourth-quarter earnings call that it expects its weight loss program to bring in more than $100 million in revenue by the end of 2025.
Despite the turbulent regulatory landscape, Hims & Hers has showed no signs of slowing down.
On Friday, the company announced it has acquired a U.S.-based peptide facility that will “further verticalize the company’s long-term ability to deliver personalized medications.” Hims & Hers will explore advances across metabolic optimization, recovery science, biological resistances, cognitive performance and preventative health through the acquisition, the company said.
That move comes just days after Hims & Hers also bought Trybe Labs, the New Jersey-based at-home lab testing facility. Trybe Labs will allow Hims & Hers to perform at-home blood draws and more comprehensive pretreatment testing.
Hims & Hers did not disclose the terms of either deal.
Tesla models Y and 3 are displayed at a Tesla dealership in Corte Madera, California, on Dec. 20, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
Tesla is voluntarily recalling 376,241vehicles in the U.S. to correct an issue with failing power-assisted steering systems, according to records posted to the website of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In a safety recall report posted on the NHTSA website, Tesla said the recall includes Model 3 and Model Y vehicles that were manufactured for sale in the U.S. from Feb. 28, 2023, to October 11, 2023, and that were equipped with a certain older software release.
The records said printed circuit boards in the steering systems in affected vehicles could become overstressed, causing the power-assist steering to fail in some cases when a Tesla vehicle rolled to a stop and then accelerated.
When electronic power-assist steering systems fail in a Tesla, drivers need to exert more force to steer their cars, which can increase the risk of a collision.
Read more CNBC tech news
Tesla told the vehicle safety regulator that it was not aware of any crashes, injuries or deaths related to the power steering failures, and that it was offering an over-the-air software update as a remedy.
The recall follows an earlier related probe and voluntary recall in China concerning the same systems.
President Donald Trump has appointed Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a team that is slashing the federal government workforce, and in some cases, regulations and entire agencies. Those cuts already affected the NHTSA, an agency Musk has long seen as standing in the way of some of his ambitions at Tesla.
The regulator has been engaged in a yearslong investigation into safety defects in the systems that Tesla markets currently as its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) options. The features do not make Tesla cars into robotaxis. They require a human driver ready to steer or brake at any time.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that Musk’s team has led mass firings at the NHTSA, reducing the agency’s workforce and capacity to investigate companies including Tesla by about 10%.